LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Scientists from OpenCell.bio and King's College London, working with Opentrons Labworks, have developed a low-cost, rapidly deployable COVID-19 testing laboratory inside a shipping container that can process 2,400 tests per day.

This is the first fully functional laboratory that can be deployed immediately to conduct COVID-19 testing anywhere in the world. The system uses a low-cost liquid handling robot developed by Opentrons Labworks to perform qPCR, the gold standard nucleic acid detection test, to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The system design is open source and the tests rely on reagents and consumables that are not single source or proprietary. This means it is not subject to the supply chain constraints faced by many COVID-19 testing labs, which all require reagents from the same few suppliers. Given Opentron's ability to quickly deploy lab automation and the test lab's shipping container form factor, the system is ready to be shipped anywhere automation test bandwidth is needed.

The team has just been awarded funding from Innovate UK for business-led innovation in response to global disruption to accelerate the translation of their work from a proof-of-concept mobile lab to multiple labs running much-needed tests. Helene Steiner, CEO of OpenCell, said: “This work is an important step in increasing the number of accredited laboratories able to carry out COVID-19 testing. Through the support of Innovate UK and an incredible team, we are working closely with the regulator , to ensure that our testing laboratory systems remain high-quality, cost-effective, and meet the rigorous standards required to conduct population testing.”

The validation data and open source protocol will appear on BioRxiv, a popular preprint research database that has been widely used to share COVID-19 testing information during development. To learn more about this system, please visit https://www.opencell.bio/coronavirus.

About OpenCell: OpenCell is transforming 70 shipping containers in London's White City into affordable biolabs for biotech start-ups. Founded in 2018 by Helene Steiner and Dr. Thomas Meany with the goal of making biotechnology more accessible and affordable. To learn more, please visit https://www.opencell.bio.

About Opentrons Labworks: Opentrons enables automation in any laboratory, starting with affordable pipetting robots for biologists. With its easy-to-use hardware and open software platform, Opentrons automates manual laboratory work and supports collaborative research for life scientists. Opentrons has helped more than 1,500 laboratories in 45 countries save time, money and laboratory costs, including 47 of the world's top 50 academic universities including MIT, Oxford and Stanford, as well as GSK Gram, Merck, 9 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, and Novartis. To learn more, visit https://www.opentrons.com.

Contact information

Helen Steiner [email protected]